He was a conservative all right, but invariably he gave the impression that he was a conservative because he was surrounded by liberals; that he had … - William F. Buckley Jr.

. Do you know the story of Nicholas Murray Butler?” “All I know about him is that he was forever the president of Columbia University and the soul of propriety.” “Exactly,” said Caroline, “and I read somewhere, in one of your uninhibited journals, that it was the ambition of Heywood Broun the journalist to become rich for the sake of indulging himself in only a single pleasure. He proposed to hire the whole of the Metropolitan Opera House and give a benefit concert sending out all the tickets gratis. But he would arrange to send tickets to prominent bald-headed New Yorkers seating them in the orchestra floor so as to describe, for the benefit of the balconies, one huge S H I T — with Nicholas Murray Butler dotting the i!” She roared with pleasure.

Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity. There are, thank Heaven, the exceptions. There are those of generous impulse and a sincere desire to encourage a responsible dissent from the Liberal orthodoxy. And there are those who recognize that when all is said and done, the market place depends for a license to operate freely on the men who issue licenses — on the politicians. They recognize, therefore, that efficient getting and spending is itself impossible except in an atmosphere that encourages efficient getting and spending. And back of all political institutions there are moral and philosophical concepts, implicit or defined. Our political economy and our high-energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas — not by day-to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into exchange to become or remain operative; and the medium of such exchange is the printed word.

Everything I do and say and the way I do and say it annoys me.